For more than a millennium, the Russian Orthodox Church has shown astonishing survival skills – from the Mongol yoke to tsarist demagoguery and enlightenment, from Soviet atheism to the chaotic 1990s. Now again, it is at the right hand of power, sanctifying Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

In this provocative new book, Lucy Ash reveals how, under Putin, religion is being stripped of its spiritual content and used as a weapon to control the population. Orthodox clerics and their acolytes distort theology as they preach Slav Christian supremacy and drag Russia backwards into a new Middle Ages.

Combining historical research with vivid present-day reportage, The Baton and the Cross explores the impact the Church is having on millions of lives – from the tower blocks of big cities to far-flung villages in Siberia. Delving into the underbelly of politics, state security and big money, Ash shows how these forces have formed an unholy alliance with Orthodoxy in the dystopia of twenty-first century Russia.